New Testament Archaeology - Paul the Tent-Maker

[Mithras]

Hi,

This is a stab in the dark, the books I have on life in NT Judaea are limited, can anyone help provide the missing pieces?

Essentially I am looking anywhere and everywhere for some mention of canvas + Roman tents. I'm pretty sure tents aren't mentioned on Diocletian's Price Edict. But they are mentioned in the New Testament, aren't they?

Paul was a tent-maker, his family were wealthy from the Roman city of Tarsus. Tarsus was a major centre from the production of linen in the Eastern Empire. Might there be a connection? Any archaeological papers that discuss the Tarsus linen trade and tents in the same breath?

From some light reading, Paul was educated in Jerusalem, and I can't seem to fasten down exactly where tent-making comes in. Some 'sources' mention that it was part of Jewish religious education to learn a trade and he learnt tent making. Sounds iffy to me, but it would invalidate the Tarsus-Linen-Tent connection if that were so ...

Is this thread too esoteric to get and replies I wonder! :lol:

[Praefectusclassis]

Tried Isaac, Limits of Empire? It's more about the Roman Army as a whole in the Near East, but who knows?

[Mithras]

THanks, I might check that out, if I can find a copy.

I understand that this is all total speculation on my part...but how many other Roman tent-makers have you heard of??? I just feel its worth digging around a little bit.

You never know ...

EDIT: Just to explain some of my reasoning further, this quote comes from"The Cloth Industry Under the Roman Empire", from Economic History Review, XIII, 1960, written by Professer AHM Jones:

"At Tarsus in the early second century, Dio states that a large proportion of the population were linen-weavers. He represents them as poor but respectable men , who would enjoy the rights of citizenship if they could afford the registration fee of 500 drachmae. The weavers must therefore have been free men of modest means, not necessarily very poor, for 500 drachmae is a large sum, about two years pay for a legionary.""

Paul of Tarsus was a tent-maker. Was he one of these linen-weavers? Or a leatherworker making goathide tents?

[Vincula]

Paul was a tent-maker

St. Paul? A tent-maker? Are you sure? hock:

[Mithras]

Definately!

Before the light on the road to Damascus and his intensive Jewish religious education, though, I think. THough I also read that he carried on tent-making during his travels to pay his own way.

[Johnny Shumate]

Acts 18

1After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth;

2And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome and came unto them.

3And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.

Acts 20:34

34Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me.


Johnny

[Caius Fabius]

Many tents in the region are woven from goathair. The nomads of Turkey still can be found living in goathair tents, and it is not impossible that in the area, Paul had learned to make and repair goathair tents. I have some books about the life of Paul, but they are only speculative about which kind of tent making trade Paul was trained to do.

[Mithras]

Yes, unfortunately there seems to be alot of goat-hair going on in southern Anatolia as well. Just to mess up my beautiful theory

[Aluscladiusmaximus]

It may well be that tents made in the middle east might have been linen but that doesn't give any proof that linen tents were used in the cold damp northern empire. I suspect you are trying to justify using a cloth tent instead of a leather one.
It may be that goats were not as common back then as I read somewhere that the goats of the Bedouin tribes turned north Africa into a desert because they would pull up the roots of the grass they eat and without the grass to hold the soil together it blew away

[Mithras]

It may well be that tents made in the middle east might have been linen but that doesn't give any proof that linen tents were used in the cold damp northern empire. I suspect you are trying to justify using a cloth tent instead of a leather one.

Exactly. I don't have a state factory producing goatskin tents a quartermaster to issue them freely and 7 mates willing to share it with me!

[hoplite14gr]

I learned interesting things about tent making but as far as St Paul is concerned some early manuscripts mention his trade as
SKOINOPOIOS = SKOINI->rope & POIO to make. So it is rope maker not tent maker. (OI -diphthong pronouced "I" like print)
Akyllas the Corinthian on whose house Paul found hospitality due to professional assosiation is mentioned in a 7th century orginal as SKOINOPOIOS not SKHNOPOIOS
SKHNH (H=I) in Greek translates as tent but SKOINI= rope.
Is it possible that the ancient scholars mixed up their staff before the poor guy who was tasked with the first english translation?
Kind regards
Stefanos

[Gaius Arrius Quintillius]

This might help. I found this referance in the Catholic Encyclopedia

"As every respectable Jew had to teach his son a trade, young Saul learned how to make tents (Acts 18:3) or rather to make the mohair of which tents were made (cf. Lewin, "Life of St. Paul", I, London, 1874, 8-9). "

[Mithras]

Thanks for those references Quintillius and Stefanos. That sort of ends the speculation!

[Jona Lendering]

Four books that may be helpful, more on Paul than on tent making:

• Gedaliah Alon, The Jews in their Land in the Talmudic Age (1980): a masterpiece on Jewish life in general, written by a modern age sage
  Jonathan L. Reed: Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus (2000): the "Jesus" of the title is there because it sells better, in fact a good book on archaeology
  Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh: Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (1992) (there's a sequel on Acts; ignore occasional irrelevant digressions on "U.S. supported, continued Israeli brutality and inhumanity" etc)
  Ben Witherington III:The Paul Quest. The Renewed Search for the Jew of Tarsus (1998): a good discussion of the life and teaching of guess who

On the tent making: please note that Paul had the Roman citizenship and studied at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most important Pharisaic teachers of his age. Paul was not poor; he must have owned something like a tent factory. Something similar can be said about Andrew and Peter: fishermen, certainly, but able to rent the right to fish in Lake Genesareth.